The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management

The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management provides state-of-the-art scholarship in the emerging field of megaproject management. Megaprojects are large, complex projects that typically cost billions of dollars and impact millions of people, like building a high-speed rail line, a megadam, a national health or pensions IT system, a new wide-body aircraft, or staging the Olympics.

The book contains 25 chapters written especially for this volume, covering all aspects of megaproject management, from front-end planning to actual project delivery, including how to deal with stakeholders, risk, finance, complexity, innovation, governance, ethics, project breakdowns, and scale itself. Individual chapters cover the history of the field and relevant theory, from behavioral economics to lock-in and escalation to systems integration and theories of agency and power. All geographies are covered - from the US to China, Europe to Africa, South America to Australia - as are a wide range of project types, from "hard" infrastructure to "soft" change projects. In-depth case studies illustrate salient points.

The Handbook offers rigorous, research-oriented, up-to-date academic view of the discipline, based on high-quality data and strong theory. It will be an indispensible resource for students, academics, policy makers, and practitioners.

Bent Flyvbjerg, BT Professor and Chair of Major Programme Management, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Bent Flyvbjerg is the first BT Professor and inaugural Chair of Major Programme Management at the University of Oxford. He is the author or editor of 10 books and more than 200 papers. His publications have been translated into 20 languages and are widely cited. His research has been covered by Science, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, China Daily, the BBC, CNN, and many other media. Flyvbjerg serves as advisor and consultant to government and business around the world, including the UK and US governments and several Fortune 500 companies. He was twice a Fulbright Scholar and received a knighthood in 2002.

1. Introduction: The Iron Law of Megaproject Management, Bent Flyvbjerg
Part I: Challenges
2. Has Megaproject Management Lost Its Way? Lessons from History, Sylvain Lenfle and Christoph Loch
3. Cycles in Megaproject Development, Matti Siemiatycki
4. Big is Fragile: An Attempt at Theorizing Scale, Atif Ansar, Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier, and Daniel Lunn
5. Institutional Challenges and Solutions for Global Megaprojects, Raymond E. Levitt and W. Richard Scott
6. Megaproject Decision Making and Management: Ethical and Political Issues, Bert van Wee and Hugo Priemus
7. Biggest Infrastructure Bubble Ever? City and Nation Building with Debt-Financed Megaprojects in China, Xuefei Ren
Part II: Causes
8. Did Megaproject Research Pioneer Behavioral Economics? The Case of Albert O. Hirschman, Bent Flyvbjerg
9. Megaproject Escalation of Commitment: An Update and Appraisal, Helga Drummond
10. Megaprojects as Games of Innovation, Roger Miller, Donald Lessard, and Vivek Sakhrani
11. Power and Sensemaking in Megaprojects, Stewart Clegg, Shankar Sankaran, Chris Biesenthal, and Julien Pollack
12. A Collective-Action Perspective on the Planning of Megaprojects, Nuno Gil
13. Understanding Drivers of Megaevents in Emerging Economies, Robert A. Baade and Victor A. Matheson
Part III: Cures
14. Innovation and Flexibility in Megaprojects: A New Delivery Model, Andrew Davies, Mark Dodgson, and David M. Gann
15. Megaproject Stakeholder Management, Graham Winch
16. Private Finance: What Problems Does It Solve, and How Well?, Graeme Hodge and Carsten Greve
17. Wider Impacts of Megaprojects: Curse or Cure?, Roger Vickerman
18. Quality Assurance in Megaproject Management: The Norwegian Way, Gro Holst Volden and Knut Samset
19. The Good Megadam: Does It Exist, All Things Considered?, Thayer Scudder
Part IV: Cases
20. Cracking the Code of Megaproject Innovation: The Case of Boeing's 787, Vered Holzmann, Aaron Shenhar, Yao Zhao, and Benjamin Melamed
21. The Power of Systems Integration: Lessons from London 2012, Andrew Davies
22. Iconic Urban Megaprojects in a Global Context: Revisiting Bilbao, Gerardo del Cerro Santamaria
23. Private Provision of Public Services: The Case of Australia's Motorways, Demi Chung
24. Megaprojects as Political Symbols: South Africa's Gautrain, Janis van der Westhuizen
25. Large Dam Development: From Trojan Horse to Pandora's Box, Rhodante Ahlers, Margreet Zwarteveen, and Karen Bakker